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Wednesday, 23 April 2014

April Update Part 1: Website and Blog Redesign

Dear all,

Excuse me for being so quiet this month,
Easter weekend already! I hope you enjoyed your time off work and ate all
the chocolate that you actually bought for your partner or children...

I’m
going to write three updates today as there is a lot I want to tell you about
and this first one is a very quick note concerning my website and my blog. The
second is going to be a quick note on my thoughts on some developments with
self publishing platforms, and the last one is going to be most likely a long
ramble on where I am in my year away writing adventure…so forgive the long
break and I am back to regular blogging again.

So, any writers out there, whether wannabe
like me, or those with actual ability – what is the most common problem people
always complain about when talking about writing? In my unscientific non-surveyed or
researched opinion it is finding the time to write and not being distracted
once you do. Therefore it won’t be a surprise when I say that I have spent the
last couple of weeks at home thinking about social media rather than writing…

…Once
you have finished tutting at me but empathizing at the same time I’ll explain.
As I have discussed in previous blogs I have quit my job and I am taking this
year to try and feel better about my life by living in Spain and writing as
much as I can. For those who didn’t know this, yes, before you say it,I know, I know…well, I mean I don’t know…I
don’t know what I will do when I am back. I will be homeless, unemployed and
broke but I don’t regret it at all and the first three months have been
fantastic and it’s the best thing I have ever done. Anyway, more of that in the
third part of this blog later today. The reason I mention it here is that I
made a planned return to London in April to see friends and family before
moving on to the next accommodation, I fly back out next week and I have spent
a lovely couple of weeks here which I will tell you about later, but what I
haven’t done here is any writing…there has been too much on, which is shame
because I was on a good roll before and it is an understatement to say that I
have a lot to do, however, I am also running my own company and have
responsibilities and cannot simply put everything else in my life to the side
while I write and I don’t think that is too much of a bad thing and that is
what I want to talk about here.

Self
publishing by yourself (as opposed to using an aggregator company) isn’t just
about writing, that may sound blindingly obvious to those of you who are doing
this but actually when you speak to people in general they do not realise the
amount of other work it takes. I suppose one could say this about any job
really, and I have a vivid memory of someone walking into my office once (in a
previous job) and asking me how I got my job as it seems a really cushy number
just doing this one particular task they always saw me doing and I had to
politely explain that in fact what they saw me doing was probably only 5% of my
entire workload, so yes, this does go for everything.

Some
of the basic elements involved include ebook formatting, cover design, editing,
author profile and account management, sales reporting and as per all UK
company requirements, end of year company accounts and self assessments. Now
whether you do this entirely by yourself or get help it doesn’t matter, it
takes a huge amount of time and effort. Once that is done you then need to move
onto the most important part of all which is marketing.Paid and unpaid marketing is essential and I
have been going over two years now and haven’t even moved into the paid
marketing stage of my business plan yet, that is a 2015 goal, and I’ll talk
about that another time.

The
part I want to talk about here is my website and my blog. First of all I have
had a little redesign of the blog, it was getting quite cluttered and busy and
I wanted to simplify it a bit. So now, I have a plain background and template
colour scheme, I have created pages and have started to include affiliate ads.

The
reason I have done this is that I am still doing everything for free, I have a
free blogger account and do not intend to go pro until next year. I enjoy
blogging and it is still more a fun and engaging hobby than a legitimate
marketing and revenue raising concern, I hope you don’t mind me being so honest
about this! I have seen some fantastic blogs, really insightful and full of
great tips and advice. I may create another blog in the future which will be a
resource for self publishing, there are tonnes out there by people who know a
hell of a lot more than me in detailed development terms, but I have some good
experience and knowledge and I want to share it with people. It will be a free
resource for people who want to know the basics. So that is something I am
looking forward to. My current blog, the one you are reading now, is a personal
blog where I talk about my writing, my thoughts on writing and insert bits and
pieces of my life here and there too. However, just because it is personal that
doesn’t mean I can get away with it not looking professional, there are so many
people out there that you need to stand out and take things seriously, so I
will always try my best to spend time on making sure good content and links are
presented well. You know what though? It takes time! People always say that
writing is the most important thing, and yes it is, but you can’t look like an
amateur and think that people will take you for anything more. If you want to
be taken seriously then you need to take every aspect of your brand seriously,
so although it means taking time away from writing, it is important, do it,
don’t neglect your online appearance.I
have visited thousands of literature related websites over the years and
unfortunately I navigate away from poor looking sites, and I think I actually
invest more time than most. We can’t help it, we are all busy, we are all
looking to move on to the next thing before we have finished what we are
already on, it’s just the pace of life we live in. So, I know that I need to
reflect on that when working on my own sites, and yes it is hard to do so when
you have no budget so I’m not pretending it is the easiest thing in the world
to create a modern super whizz bang fancy website but just keep it in mind that
you need to work hard at it. I know my blog is not the best, and I know that it
needs work but I have got it to a level I am happy with for now, and when I am
away for the rest of the year writing (how many times have I sais this out
loud! I really had better get some work done or I will never live it down…) I
am comfortable that it will exist as it is until 2015 when I will move on to
the next stage of my plan and start investing in an updated professional blog.

Moving
on to the website. I like it. I really do. I have so much to thank my designer
for because we have worked with such limited budget and I think made a very
good stab at presenting a professional image. I have one or two more updates to
do this coming week so there will be a handful of changes to make and then it
will be like this for the rest of the year. The beauty of doing something
yourself is that you can really put yourself out there, no corporate
constraints on your vision (not that there is anything wrong with constraint,
we all have to be careful on that front) and you can try lots of new ideas.
However, that said, you can’t deliver those ideas without money and without a
serious amount of development time.

That
is why it is a eternally frustrating business, running your own company because
you have to manage ideas, it is not an immediate thing to be able to come up
with an idea and then instantly apply it. That can be a good thing of course,
most good ideas once scrutinized become bad ideas, but when you have a good
idea, there is no marketing team to get working on it, no development team, no
sales team, no-one other than yourself. So I have lots I want to do with my
website and I have lots of projects well under way that I will be incorporating
into the website in 2015. Let’s face it, if you have a website that is a
selling platform then once someone has bought a product then there is often no
reason for them to come back, or if they are considering buying something, if
they don’t then they will never come back. So you have to make websites
interesting, there has to be a constant update of good content, interactive
content that isn’t just about selling something, of course the aim is that
people will buy something but they need a reason to be there in the first place
and I want people to enjoy my site regardless of what books are there for sale.

So, over the
next few years I hope that the things I am working on will make it a place that
is cool enough in its own right and I will get visitors who enjoy being
involved in some of the things I am doing. I can’t let you know about them now
of course, that would be telling, but I am excited by them and look forward to
having my life separated into two related but distinct parts - the writer and
the…well I’m not actually sure what the term would be for the other part? Social Media
Developer? Social Media Organiser? Online Mischievous Monkey? Who knows, but
it’s all to do with being part of an online community of reading and writing
book lovers (and ahem…ebook lovers…)

Yes, I need to
make money to eat, so I need to advertise, I need to sell ebooks, I need to do
all that business-e stuff but let’s just be honest, it will be years (if ever!)
before I make money that way, it will be a struggle and anyone who hasn’t
realised that yet soon will, I will be poor for a long time to come but the big
difference is that I am doing something I really love and enjoy and opposed to
the highs and lows of my employment history to date, it is something I want to
do for the rest of my life. So we can all laugh at this naivety next year when
my savings are gone and I am picking up bits of stale bread out of bins for
dinner but let’s live the ambition for a while.

So the important thing is not giving up.
You have to keep going but then why am I spending time and energy on developing
other projects? Why am I spending time on websites and blogs? Why don’t I just
write all day long? The truth is that probably I should because first and
foremost that is the single most important aspect of my life, that is what it
all boils down to. Yet…and yet…I want to be involved in these other things, I
enjoy it, I like blogging, I like working on these cool projects that I haven’t
told you about yet so in reality they don’t even exist yet! I like meeting
people from all over the world who have the same interests and if I wasn’t
making YouTube videos, or Pinterest boards and all the rest of it, then I
wouldn’t have met these people and I wouldn’t have such varied content in my
life. So I will keep juggling, I will keep spending time on multiple project
because I like the variety, I like learning, I like being tested and also you
know what…? When the time comes in a few years when I have several more short
stories published and I have my first novel published…excuse me for a moment
while I just wipe my brow after saying that….when all that is a reality, I
don’t want to exist alone and have to build up a platform. I want my name and
my brand already established, I don’t mean a household name, I haven’t totally
lost the plot don’t worry, I mean I want a nice online community that has all
manner of weird and wonderful social media projects going on.

The only way to get there is to work hard
and so I need to write every day and not get sidetracked like I have done over
the last couple of weeks doing other things, but if every now and again I do
spend a bit of time on something else I just need to remind myself that it is
all going towards the same end goal, it is all for my own progression and
development. This goes for you too, don’t beat yourself up too much if you
spend a bit of time away from writing, it’s all valuable, just make sure it is
something that is going towards your development, it you play five hours of
solitaire then yes, that is something you need to address, but if you spend a
bit of time in Facebook groups, or LinkedIn groups, or community forums, or you
learn a bit about the new epub conversion guidelines or you fiddle around with
your blog making it look a bit more attractive to visitors then go for it, why
not, it all helps, it all aids the ol’grey matter...as long as you don’t lose sight of writing as priority
number 1. Some of it is in fact vital! Read
Hubspot’s latest posts, read all the distributer newsletters, read the
technical updates to your social media sites; if you were in a full time job in
the traditional sense (and being self employed is as full time as you will ever
get, you never stop thinking about it!) then you would be expected to go on
training courses here and there, you would be expected to learn about the new
software updates, you would be expected to go to meetings and so on…this is no
different, you have to treat this as the most important job of your life (I
haven’t got kids so of course that goes first if you have J ) Self development is vital. If you look at the development
sections of my blogroll you can visit some really interesting sites that you
can learn a lot from, I don’t do it nearly enough but I always feel better for
it when I do! If you are self publishing then the smallest of tips can really
advance you.

To sum up, my website and blog are not as I
want them to be but I am very happy with them, there is a lot to work on and a
lot of projects to integrate and I hope you stick around to see where it goes
but for now until the end of this year I will be focusing on writing. January
2015 will be an interesting month, I am both absolute terrified and absolutely
determined…let’s see which one wins out.

R.G Rankine

www.rgrankine.com

Follow me on Social Media

Dear all, if you would like to purchase any of my short story ebooks (they are all priced at the equivalent of £0.99/$0.99) then I have listed the Amazon links below but if you have another ereader you can go to my website: www.rgrankine.com and find the links for Nook, Apple, Google and Kobo. Thank you. Enjoy the blog :)

Disclaimer

Dear all, please note that I don’t check the links on my blogrolls that often so there may be some out of date or not working. I’ll do my best to remove or update when I can. I am not responsible for any of the websites that are linked below, they are for your reference and interest only and I take no liability for their services. If you would like your website listed below then please feel free to email me the details and I’ll add them. Thank you.